This Wasn't the Birthday I Was Expecting
by Lucillia
Summary: Naruto thinks it's a birthday surprise gone badly wrong which will only end when he finds where his birthday present has been hidden. Boruto and Himawari are desperate to get back to their own time. And, thanks to a misunderstanding, Hyuuga Hiashi is torn between arranging a shotgun wedding between Naruto and his twelve year-old daughter Hinata, or just using the shotgun on Naruto.
1. Naruto's Birthday Surprise

Naruto blinked as he looked at himself in the mirror. Despite the fact that the Nanadaime Hokage was usually up with the sun, he wasn't a morning person and usually didn't actually wake up until sometime during his morning shower. Usually two cups of heavily sweetened coffee would finish the job, and he'd finally be out the door for another draining day as Hokage. That had been why he hadn't noticed that he was in a filthy bathroom that looked naggingly familiar until his shower was done. Turning to look in the mirror, he'd noticed another oddity.

He'd known that his wife and some of his friends had been planning a birthday surprise for him behind his back, but he hadn't expected...This. He wasn't sure how he felt about This. While childhood had been great for some, this time of his life hadn't exactly been the best for him, and finding himself at around the age he had been when he'd graduated the Academy wasn't the pleasant surprise it would've been for the likes of Sakura or maybe Kiba or Shikamaru. Honestly, about the only person in his group of friends who would be less happy with looking into a mirror and finding their twelve year-old self looking back at them would've been Sasuke, with Sai, Kakashi-sensei and possibly Iruka-sensei being close runners up.

Examining the body that went with the face in the mirror, he found that, however it was done, it was an excellent job and matched everything he remembered about how he'd looked when he was last twelve. He honestly didn't know how his friends could've done it.

Quickly quashing the panic inducing thought that his friends hadn't done this and that he'd somehow gone back to the past and erased EVERYTHING that had come since then, he reminded himself of that one time he'd gone time traveling and met his dad, and that time travel didn't work that way. Had he gone back to the past, he would be the same age as he would've been when he'd left the future, not twelve. The way he'd been sixteen when he'd gone back and met his father.

Sighing as he tried to figure out exactly when and how his friends would spring the rest of the "surprise" that was waiting for him on him, Naruto grabbed the stale, ragged towel that was the only one available to him, wrapped it around his waist, and headed into what would either be his home or somewhere else.

Naruto was, as he discovered, in what he thought might be an exact replica of the apartment he'd had prior to Konoha having been destroyed by Pein. Since he didn't have total recall and hadn't set foot in his old apartment in close to fifteen years, he wasn't entirely sure if that was the case. Sitting at the edge of his old bed staring at him were Boruto who was only eight but tried to act twice his age and Boruto's six year-old sister Himawari who was very much like Hinata until she wasn't. And, Himawari was SCARY when she wasn't.

Deciding that being undressed in front of his children - Thank God it was just his children, and not half the village! - was completely inappropriate, Naruto went over to his dresser, grabbed some clothes - Damn, he hadn't seen that tracksuit in YEARS! - and hurried back into the bathroom to get dressed.

Naruto mentally debated cutting his hair back to a length he was more used to as he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror a second time, but decided that there was no time, and that Hinata would probably kill him if he got it wrong since cutting his hair was her job. Leaving his hair as is, he proceeded to get dressed.

Fully attired in his old Orange and Blue tracksuit and feeling slightly naked without Iruka's old Hitai-ate which had gone with it, Naruto stepped out of the bathroom a minute after he went in and back into the main room where his children were still sitting on the bed, this time staring out the window at a Hokage monument that had only four faces in wide-eyed shock as if it were someone who'd abruptly had a head grow out of their stomach in the middle of what had until then been a perfectly ordinary conversation. Boruto seemed to be the first to sense that he'd returned, and whirled around to face him.

"...Dad?" Boruto hesitantly asked.

"Yes Boruto?" Naruto replied.

"What's going on?" Boruto asked, his eyes wide and somewhat fearful.

"I think your mother and some of our friends have arranged a birthday surprise for me." Naruto replied somewhat embarrassed by the obvous effort that his precious people had put into this surprise since it didn't feel like a Genjutsu at all, and acting on his first instinct, which had been to dispel whatever Genjutsu he might've been in when he'd first seen his twelve year-old self in the mirror that morning, had resulted in a big fat nothing.

Boruto looked utterly confused by this.

"Why are we here?" Boruto asked, making an expansive gesture that took in the whole of Naruto's apartment and what could be seen of Konoha outside the window.

"Well, this is the apartment I used to live in when I was this age." Naruto said, feeling ashamed at how grotty it was and how poorly his child self had kept the place for the first time. "And, that is what Konoha used to look like back then."

"I'm guessing you two are here because my birthday wouldn't be complete without you." Naruto continued, smiling at both of his beloved children, knowing how badly he would've freaked out if he'd woken up and found himself in what looked like his child body in his childhood home and that his children were nowhere to be found.

That would've been BAD.

"Yeah right. Your last two birthdays were fine without us." Boruto grumbled at the same time that Hmawari said "It really wouldn't?" in a hopeful tone of voice that cut the Nanadaime deeper than Boruto's comment had.

"Well, you two, it looks like we'll be having a full day ahead of us." Naruto said as he moved towards the door trying to figure out exactly where his friends wanted him to go before he and his children reached whatever special surprise had been arranged to cap off the day.

Considering the fact his friends, and possibly quite a few villagers had gone all out to create this _painful_ replica of Konoha, it looked like it would be a full day indeed. The only things that were keeping him from curling back up in bed and refusing to go anywhere until someone came and dragged him out of the replica of his apartment were the knowledge that his friends had _meant_ well, and the curious and, above all, hopeful looks on the faces of his children.

 _Sage of the Six Paths on a goddamn cracker!_ Naruto thought five minutes after he'd left his apartment with his children in tow. _Did they really have to go THIS far?!_

Walking through the village that he knew wasn't a Genjutsu thanks to a number of discreet slices he'd made by running his thumb along the shuriken he'd kept in his pocket, he could see and feel the semi-hostile stares and hear the whispers which had turned curious as his children trailed after him.

"Boruto!" Naruto snapped as his son gave one of the villagers a rude handsign that he must've picked up during his month at the Academy, because the boy sure as hell hadn't picked it up at home, and all of his and Hinata's friends had learned to watch their language - all of it - around the kids before they could walk.

"Sorry dad." Boruto grumbled, clearly not sorry at all.

Deciding to cut his little tour of the replica of Old Konoha short because Himawari was wilting under the glares of the "villagers" and Boruto was getting that look in his eye that the Nanadaime Hokage knew signaled the sort of trouble that would end with a train crashed into the Hokage Monument or something just as massively costly and destructive, Naruto asked himself where his friends would be in all of this.

Before he could narrow down the choices which ranged from "Ichiraku Ramen" to the "Hokage's Office", a matronly looking old woman came out of a bakery and started trying to lure his kids away from him. He had been about to let his kids go in and get whatever treat had obviously been arranged for them when the woman who had been trying to get his children inside her bakery said "You don't want to be associating with THAT boy!" before giving him That Look. The one that he hadn't forgotten even after more than a decade and a half.

Feeling like he'd had a bucket of cold water dumped on him, he grabbed his children back and said "My children and I will never be frequenting your establishment. Not now, nor in the future." in a cold tone he rarely used with anybody who wasn't an enemy, and frequently, not even with enemies.

"His WHAT?!" someone exclaimed before the whispers that followed him and his children increased tenfold.

Naruto didn't like this. His old danger instincts were triggering around what were supposed to be his fellow villagers, the fight side of his fight-or-flight instincts was struggling its way to the fore, and his children were here which made things ten times worse. Deciding that things would be better if his children were in what should be the most heavily guarded part of the village, Naruto made his way to where he remembered the Academy being before the village had been rebuilt, since there was a good chance that there would be a replica Academy there considering that there were replicas of just about everything else he remembered being in Old Konoha everywhere else.

The old and much smaller Ninja Academy was a blast from the past. Despite the fact that it had been about two decades since he'd last walked its halls, he found that he could remember where just about everything was. Deciding that this was a logical place to look for his friends so he could get his present and end this mess that was getting on his nerves rather than making him happy as they'd intended, since this was where they'd all met, Naruto headed to where his old classroom had been, his children trailing behind him.

Opening the door to the room was like stepping into a flashback. The class was about half full of students, some he only vaguely recognized. Rather than it just being the "Rookie Nine" as they'd been briefly known, even some of the washouts were here, and some of his friends weren't. As he actually stepped inside of the replica of his old classroom, Boruto and Himawari ran past him yelling "Mom!" as they made their way to a small figure hunched over a desk in the back of the room, causing everyone to turn and look at them.

Glad to see that his children were safe with their mother, Naruto said "Alright guys, this - whatever this was supposed to be - has been fun, but can't you please just get out my birthday present and end this?", doing his best to sound cheerful if slightly impatient so his precious people wouldn't be hurt by the fact that he hadn't enjoyed the gift they'd tried to give him.

Everyone in the room turned to look at Naruto as if he'd grown a second head.

"Who'd give _you_ a birthday present?" a boy whose name Naruto vaguely remembered had something to do with a cooking grill sneered.


	2. You Killed Mom!

Hinata had been doing what she usually did, namely sitting at the absolute back of the classroom trying to make herself invisible as possible, when two unfamiliar children who looked to be about Academy starting age ran up to her yelling "Mom!". While she was trying to figure out what the hell was going on, both children latched onto her, hugging her tightly.

"This has been the worst morning ever!" the blond boy who looked very much like Naruto said as he tried to bury his face in her shoulder. "Everyone's been staring at us, and not in a nice way and they've all been saying mean things too!"

"Why would you and your and dad's friends do something so awful to dad for his birthday?" the girl who was on Hinata's other side asked. "Dad's pretending to be happy because he doesn't want to upset you, but..."

While Hinata was trying to process what the heck was happening, she vaguely heard one of Sasuke's ever-present fangirls, Ami if she wasn't mistaken, say "Don't listen to Hibachi Naruto, we got you a present, but we hid it and the party won't start until you find it."

Naruto made a rather endearing whining noise at this, which made Hinata lose focus on everything else, including the strange children who were clinging to her and jabbering in her ears.

Then Naruto's attitude shifted to that determined one that Hinata loved very much.

"Alright! Let's get this party started" Naruto yelled before making a handsign, causing every available surface of the room including the walls and the ceiling to be covered in Bunshin.

"Boruto, Himawari, you two sit tight and behave for your mother. I'll have that present found before the cake's even been delivered." One of the Bunshin that was nearest to Hinata, causing her heart to go pitter-pat and her head to get all spinny said, making the part of Hinata that was barely holding onto consciousness wonder How Naruto had thrown his voice like that.

A second later, the Bunshin kissed her on the lips, revealing that it was solid, and therefore really the real Naruto. The next thing Hinata knew, the world had gone black and there were voices screaming "You killed mom!" above her.

* * *

Shikamaru discreetly poked the Bunshin on the desk in front of him as he tried to study this newest piece of the puzzle that Uzumaki Naruto had presented him with this morning upon arrival. The Bunshin was solid, but didn't feel wet or like dirt or a half dozen other substances. Kage Bunshin then.

Exactly when had Naruto learned the Kage Bunshin? How was he capable of making enough of them to put an S-Ranked Jounin in the morgue without dropping dead? Were the two "children" that Naruto had brought with him also Kage Bunshin? What purpose were they supposed to serve? This didn't feel like Naruto's usual sort of prank. And, if the target was Hinata, it was downright cruel. Naruto hadn't pulled a prank that could be considered anywhere near as cruel as what he might be doing to Hinata - whatever it was - in years. Naruto tended to prefer property destruction to psychological torture when it came to his pranks.

To sum it up, it was "Troublesome".

It was at that point that Assistant Instructor Mizuki had pushed his way through the backlog of students that had been trying to enter the room only to find the way blocked by Naruto's Kage Bunshin and started trying to push his way through Naruto's Shadow Clones and into the room.

One of the clones near the front of the class noticed the mild-mannered Chunin who'd been known to speak up for Naruto on occasion and gave the man an utterly cold look that had an almost predatory edge to it. Mizuki's response to that look was fear. Actual fear, as if he were utterly terrified of the pint-sized Dead Last who stood two ranks below him.

"Oh look, someone brought a piñata" the Kage Bunshin that had spotted Mizuki said, drawing the attention of the other Kage Bunshin who gave Mizuki that exact cold look.

"Love to stay and play Mizuki, but we've got a present to find Dattebayo!" one of the Narutos that Shikamaru was half certain was the original said.

This was apparently the cue for all of the Narutos to depart because, with cries of "Yeah boss!" and "Let's find that present!" and oddly one cry of "Let's go streaking!" from a Kage Bunshin who promptly dispelled, all of the Kage Bunshin went streaming out of the classroom windows along with the original, leaving behind a room full of thoroughly confused eleven and twelve year-olds and a silver-haired Chunin who was sitting in a puddle of his own piss.

"So," Chouji said, breaking the utter silence that had fallen over the room for almost an entire minute. "When _is_ Naruto's birthday?"

"It's..." Shikamaru thought for about a second, pulling up his mental files on his classmates which contained all the information he'd passively acquired on them over the years. "Today actually."

"Oh man, that..." Chouji started before Kiba finished his sentence with "Sucks."

Several of the kids in the room, including one who'd been born the day after the Kyuubi attack seemed to agree with Chouji and Kiba's sentiment. While it was a school day, it was a half-day, and the rest of the day wasn't one for birthday parties no matter who you belonged to or didn't belong to as the case may be. Too many people spent the day in remembrance of family that had been lost, and nobody wanted to hear the popping of party balloons or the sounds of those ridiculous noisemakers on this most solemn of days.

One poor kid amongst the Nara who'd been born two years to the day before the Kyuubi attack was usually forced to wait a whole week after his birthday before he could have a party.

"That was just mean Ami." one of the girls in Sasuke's fanclub, Fuki if Shikamaru wasn't mistaken, said. "Telling Naruto he has a present on his birthday."

"I thought he was joking!" Ami replied, "Nobody has October 10 for a birthday!"

It was at that point that Iruka entered the room and rather than finding a semi-attentive class listening to a lesson just started by Mizuki, he found disorganized chaos surrounding Mizuki who was sitting in a puddle of...

Iruka went over and helped his frend up from off the floor. Then, he stormed up to where Kiba was sitting and yelled "KIBA! Get down there and clean that mess up right now!"

"No way!" Kiba yelled back. "There's no way in hell I'm cleaning up Mizuki's pee! Make him clean it up!"

"Are you seriously trying to blame that on the teacher?!" Iruka yelled, pointing to the puddle on the floor.

"But it really was Mizuki!" Kiba yelled back. "Naruto scared him and he peed and fell down!"

"Oh," Iruka said disbelievingly. "And, just how did Naruto scare a Chunin so badly that he peed himself?"

"Naruto gave him a real mean look and called him a birthday piñata!" Kasumi, who was the third member of the Ami, Fuki, Kasumi trio exclaimed.

Iruka then stormed up to the back of the room where a short blond with whisker marks on his cheeks was still trying to poke Hinata awake alongside his whiskermarked sister. Shikamaru noted the uncharacteristically nervous set of Umino Iruka's shoulders which the man was doing an admirable job of hiding.

"NARUTO!" Iruka yelled at the boy? that Shikamaru recalled Naruto had called Boruto.

This caught Boruto's attention. The boy looked up at the man who'd yelled at him and looked almost relieved.

"Uncle Iruka!" the boy said, sounding slightly desperate. "Mom won't wake up!"

Iruka swiftly snatched Hinata away from the two children that called her "mom", sharply booted the Boruto boy away from him and examined the Hyuuga girl for obvious signs of injury as he ran to the front of the room and out the door. Something about the set of the man's shoulders as he carried the Hyuuga girl was completely off. It was like he was trying to contain himself before he lost it in front of everybody.

* * *

"Aw man, another dead body!" Naruto's Kage Bunshin who was searching the woods near the "village" for his birthday present complained.

"Where do all these dead bodies keep coming from?" he asked as he followed proper protocol, which was to mark the location of the body and leave the scene as intact as possible for the forensics team which would be called in once his report reached the Hokage's desk.

Summoning a young toad which gave him a strange look the way the last three had, Naruto scribbled the location of the dead body he'd found onto a leaf and sent it off with the toad.

Sighing, the Kage Bunshin got back to work searching for his present. The sooner his present was found, the sooner the party would happen, and the sooner that this undoubtedly very expensive _experience_ would be all over.

* * *

Hatake Kakashi had been sitting at the Memorial stone since dawn. Considering what day it was, about the only thing that would get him to move anytime before sundown would be an urgent summons from the Hokage.

As he entered the fourth hour of his vigil a certain orange clad blond haired boy entered the field in which the Memorial stone was located and made a beeline for him.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei, I know it's probably cheating, but..." a boy that Hatake Kakashi usually avoided due to the pain being in his presence brought said "Could you help me find where my friends hid my birthday present? The party won't start until I find it."

Much to his surprise, considering he usually kept his cool better than this, Kakashi felt an upswelling of anger at his sensei's son's request. Though he usually kept his distance from the boy, he had heard enough about his comings and goings to know that Naruto didn't really have any friends.

That had been one of the things that had worried the Hokage in regards to the boy.

"Sure Naruto-kun," Kakashi found himself saying as a plan formed in his mind. "Why don't you go that way, while I go this way?" he continued as he pointed in two completely random directions.

As soon as the boy was busy searching some bushes in the area that Kakashi had indicated, said Hatake turned towards the direction of the Academy.

* * *

A pair of Kage Bunshin sighed as they dropped a dead weight onto a gurney near the hospital entrance.

"Found him passed out on Training Field 27" The Kage Bunshin on the left who'd had the man's feet reported when a medic came, looking like he was about to chase him off.

God. He'd almost forgotten how awful things had been back when he was this age. Running around this replica of Old Konoha was bringing it all back however. Whoever had set this place up had gotten it right all the way down to the stares, glares, and whispers he used to receive back before he'd saved everybody.

As the Kage Bunshin who were still trying to figure out why they looked Twelve and narrowed it down to something having to do with the fact that the main body looked twelve today were about to leave, Umino Iruka ran in carrying Hinata.

"Hinata!" the clone on the right yelled, catching Iruka's attention.

"What happened Iruka-sensei?!" the clone on the left asked.

Iruka turned and gave the clones a look that was a combination of anger, confusion, worry, fear and that cold look that Iruka hadn't given him in more than twenty years.

* * *

"I can't believe he kicked me like that!" Boruto wheezed as he clutched his ribs which were undoubtedly bruised.

"It's okay." Himawari said. "Auntie Sakura's here. She'll fix you right up!"

"Auntie" Sakura however was flinching away from all the attention that was suddenly pointed in her direction following the little dark-haired girl's statement.

It was at that point that the door to the room full of students who were taking advantage of the fact that they were unsupervised by eating, playing games, and having conversations slammed open.

"Alright you little fuckers!" A scary looking silver-haired man whose face was half covered in a mask and who had an eye covered by his hitai-ate yelled. "I don't know which of you brats convinced Naruto that he had a birthday present waiting for him and I don't care, but there had better be a perfectly acceptable, neatly wrapped present with Naruto's name on it sitting in an easy to find spot within the next ten minutes, or else!"

The man who had gotten the room's attention and nearly had everyone pissing themselves in fear then slammed the door shut.

Everyone turned to look at the whisker-cheeked blond at the back of the room as soon as the sliding door hit the doorjam with enough force to crack it.

"Oh, wow!" Boruto exclaimed with stars in his eyes. "Kakashi-oyaji is AWESOME!"

The door slammed open a second time, and the scary silver haired ninja stepped through, just as frightening as before.

"And, you had better get started on the party that goes with that present immediately, or there's going to be hell to pay!" the silver-haired nin exclamed, glaring at the room with his lone, merciless, charcoal colored eye.

"Why wasn't Kakashi-oyaji this awesome back when he was Hokage?" Boruto asked Himawari as the other children in the room started running about like chickens with their heads cut off, except for Shikamaru who sat his desk muttering "Troublesome".

"I don't know." Himawari said with a shrug.


	3. Hospital Blues

Iruka warily watched Naruto, who'd managed to change his clothes, restyle his hair and beat him to the hospital, while the both of them waited for news on Hinata's condition. Up until today, he would've sworn that Naruto was just a lonely little boy who was loyal to the village that pulled pranks to get attention, the way he had been when he was a child. Aside from when he'd first met Naruto and didn't yet know him, he hadn't once thought that the Kyuubi might be in charge in any way. Then, he'd come to work this morning on the twelfth anniversary of the Kyuubi attack to find Mizuki sitting in a puddle of his own pee, and an oddly-dressed Naruto who was obviously trying out a new look standing over an unconscious Hinata.

As he was about to broach the subject of this morning in order to get Naruto's version of events, or whatever lie that Naruto would claim was the truth but would give him a clue to the real truth from the boy who'd dispelled his Bunshin with a "The boss isn't going to like this" which had surprisingly come from the Bunshin, Naruto ran into the hospital looking frantic.

"No news yet boss!" the Naruto that had been sitting next to Iruka the entire time said.

It couldn't be. There was no way that a boy who hadn't mastered the Bunshin could create Kage Bunshin. Was there? Or, had Naruto been toying with him by pretending to be unable to do such an elementary Jutsu? Why though? To what end? What would the Kyuubi want at the Academy?

"Naruto," Iruka said, not sure which Naruto to address. "What happened this morning?"

"You mean you weren't in on it?" Naruto asked, looking confused.

"In on what?" Iruka asked, wondering if today was just some elaborate and utterly wrong prank being pulled on him, and that Mizuki was in on it in order to get revenge for last month.

"My birthday surprise!" Naruto said.

"What birthday surprise?" Iruka found himself asking, since that wasn't what he'd been expecting. Honestly, he'd been half expecting the boy to start laughing and saying "Ha ha! You fell for it!" and half fearing that the boy would turn utterly demonic and say something that would both terrify him and make him realize that there was never actually a Naruto in there, just an ancient demon which had nearly destroyed Konoha and had killed his parents.

"Oh, you know, the whole making it look like I'm twelve again and giving me a day to be a kid, away from all of my adult responsibilities. I guess Konohamaru's filling in for me at the office today, since Kakashi-sensei is here playing along, and Tsunade baa-chan said that she wouldn't be coming within five miles of the hat after she retired." Naruto said breezily, as if his answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm still trying to figure out how you guys managed to build the replica village and hire so many actors without me noticing. You seem to have gotten everything right, right down to that traitor Mizuki being at the Academy to teach. The actor you hired to play him was very good. I was almost convinced that he'd actually wet himself!"

"Naruto," Iruka said, feeling utter confusion sweep over him as the morning went from strange and nervewracking to utterly surreal. "That really is Mizuki, and he really did pee himself."

"Oh," Naruto said, looking slightly stunned. "So, you guys actually sprung Mizuki from jail for this?"

Iruka wasn't sure how to respond to this question, since it looked like Naruto honestly believed that Mizuki of all people was a traitor who belonged in prison.

"Well, it's a good thing that the guys are there in case he gets any ideas." Naruto continued, his cheerful mask sliding into place. "There's no way in hell I'm letting that man anywhere near my kids unsupervised."

Before Iruka could think of a question or a response to that, one of the Iryo-nin stepped out of the emergency treatment area with Hinata.

"She's fine Umino-san," the Medic said. "The fainting spell seems to have been brought on by a combination of shock and the fact that she isn't eating properly at home due to stress. We've advised her regarding..."

Naruto didn't allow the Medic to finish his report.

"Oh thank the Sage!" Naruto yelled as he ran towards the cripplingly shy Hyuuga girl and held her tight, expressing genuine relief that she was okay. "I'm going to take you home and make sure you eat until...Hinata?...Hinata?...Hinata!"

Well, that was that mystery solved. Sort of. Possibly? Now, Iruka had to figure out exactly why there were several Narutos running around, and exactly who was responsible for Naruto thinking he was from the future, where he couldn't possibly have been Hokage given his list of predecessors.

The thought of Hatake Kakashi of all people being made Hokage made Iruka shudder. The thought that the Kyuubi might've been behind this mess and had somehow gone from dormant to manipulating a normally kind-hearted and ramunctious but very, very lonely little boy nearly made him do a Mizuki impression.

* * *

"And, exactly why aren't you helping your little classmates with Naruto's party, hmmm?" Hatake Kakashi asked the pair of whisker marked children who had just been sitting at the back of the room doing nothing. He had a smile on his face that he knew was downright intimidating rather than friendly despite all of the ostensible sunniness of it.

Rather than being intimidated into racing to comply with his heavily implied order, the blond boy who looked very much like a slightly younger version of Naruto stared up at him with stars in his eyes.

"My brother would help, but he's injured and Auntie Sakura isn't fixing him up for some strange reason." a smaller girl who looked like a blue-eyed Hyuuga who also had whisker marks on her cheeks said.

"You're not just trying to get out of your share of the work are you?" Kakashi asked, giving the kids one more chance to get up and get moving before he "checked" the boy's undoubtedly very minor "injury".

Three...Two...One...Okay, time was up.

Kakashi lunged forward, moved the boy's hand away from where it was covering his "injured" ribs, and then started poking. One rib slightly broken, two possibly bruised. Bad enough for the hospital considering it was a kiddie we were talking about here, and he'd damn near never heard the end of it the last time he'd let some kid go running around with broken ribs.

Kakashi picked the boy up and was about to Shunshin out when a vaguely familiar silver haired man entered the room and gawped at the hive of mostly aimless but completely frantic activity.

"Hey, you!" Kakashi said, searching around for the man's name, not coming up with it since it wasn't his job to memorize the names of every Konoha shinobi, but coming up with a bit of information that he associated with someone he thought might be the man "Team killer."

The man turned and gave him a glare that confirmed that he was indeed the person he was thinking of.

"Make sure that these brats have a perfectly adequate child's birthday party ready for me to inspect when I get back from the hospital!" Kakashi said before hefting the small boy who looked like a younger Naruto with elements of someone else mixed in into a more comfortable position and Shunshining out of the room.

A minute later, Kakashi was at the hospital.

"Fractured rib." Kakashi reported dispassionately as he handed the child off to a medic, catching the attention of a certain blond haired boy in an orange and blue tracksuit who had been arguing with another medic when he'd arrived.

"Oh my god!" Naruto yelled. "Boruto! What happened?!"

"Uncle Iruka kicked me!" Boruto said, sounding like he still didn't believe it.

Rather than denying this claim, Iruka stood there stupidly looking back and forth between Naruto and the boy that Naruto had called Boruto as if there was something about the two boys he couldn't process.

Naruto's entire attitude shifted, and the orange-clad boy got a look on his face which Kakashi last recalled seeing on Minato's when someone had been dumb enough to attack Kushina right in front of him.

"Iruka-sensei." Naruto said, his voice taking on a dangerous tone which Minato's had only taken on when someone close to him had been threatened.

"Yes?" Iruka asked.

"START RUNNING -TTEBAYO!" Naruto yelled in such a way that Kakashi found himself having flashbacks of his team being chased by an angry Kushina.

"That boy is just like his mother." Kakashi said as he stepped out of the way of one Umino Iruka who had apparently realized that Naruto was serious the second the boy turned a strange gold color and Chakra flames started leaping off of of him.

As Naruto chased the hapless Chunin out of the door of the hospital, there was a yell of "THE KYUUBI'S LOOSE!" and a great deal of panicked screaming from outside.

* * *

The Hokage sighed as yet another toad delivered a leaf on which someone had messily scribbled the location of yet another dead body.

"What's Jiraiya doing looking for bodies around Konoha?" Sarutobi Hiruzen wondered aloud. Last he'd heard, his student had been gathering intel on Orochimaru and a group called the Akatsuki.

"It aint Jiraiya." the toad said. "Only answer I got when I was told by my parents that I actually had to deliver this to you was that if you've signed the Toad Summoning scroll once, you've signed it for all time even if you haven't signed the scroll yet."

Well, wasn't that...interesting. Considering the odd report he'd gotten from Minato about sixteen years back, he shouldn't have been all that surprised.

It looked like they had a time traveler running around digging up dead bodies. Possibly looking for a way to get justice for someone a few years early while it could still be gotten without disrupting the timeline too much considering the fact that the man, whoever he was, hadn't come straight to the office with the location of the deceased individual whose fate concerned him and demanded that something be done. One body in a bunch would be less suspicious, and would give few if any clues to who the time traveler was, thereby making it difficult if not impossible to keep the individual from travelling back to the past in the first place, should the killer not be found in a very short timeframe.

As for the mess of bodies that all seemed to be clustered in some woodland dumping ground themselves, this was one of the reasons why he had been so angry when Danzo had given the order to exterminate the Uchiha. The Uchiha may have been utter assholes, and there may have been a bit of a police brutality problem in later years, but the Uchiha had been an effective police force who trained their young in policing from practically the moment they could sit up.

That, and the Uchiha had made it clear what would happen to people they caught making unauthorized kills in _their_ _Village_.

Without the Uchiha around to keep such criminals in line, this sort of mess was one of the side effects.

Sighing, the Hokage jotted down another note for the poor and understaffed and half-trained forensics team that had been dispatched the second the first report of a dead body had hit his desk. This sort of thing was not to be tolerated in a ninja village, but there was little that could be done about it, considering the fact that Konoha was lacking a well-trained police force due to the fact that the now virtually extinct Uchiha had never thought to leave behind a set of training manuals, and consulting Itachi was not an option.

As this latest missive was winging its way to the poor, overworked and overwhelmed forensics team, the door to the Hokage's office burst open.

"Hokage-sama...The Kyuubi!" an out of shape Chunin who looked to have run all the way to his office from Suna, but more likely hadn't come from further than the village gates, yelled.

Well, wasn't this just...

The Sandaime gestured for a certain ANBU to follow him hoping that this was just another false alarm, like that time when Naruto was six, and had stayed up watching that Creature Feature, and gotten...Ideas.

He'd had the damned hardest time not laughing until he peed himself at the sight of Uchiha Fugaku standing there stoically pretending that there was absolutely nothing unusual in the least about having the Kyuubi Jinchuriki who was wearing a cape and fake plastic fangs clinging to his shoulders as he tried to bite the man's neck with said fangs back then.

He almost felt guilty about what he'd said and done to Naruto after that incident, considering the fact that the boy had been utterly terrified of both ghosts and the Head of both the Uchiha Clan and the KMPF ever since. Strangely, Fugaku had never thanked him for the fact that Naruto would run in the opposite direction of the man screaming his little head off rather than climbing all over him like a little monkey, or tiny Vampire rather, during their later encounters.

* * *

Naruto lay on the ground about ten feet away from a treed Iruka who was nursing three broken ribs and a broken leg while wondering how the heck he was still alive considering the murderous look that had been in those red eyes which had replaced Naruto's usual blue as his student had attacked him for having harmed his "son".

"My...Everything hurts." Naruto whined as his burned looking skin healed to something approaching a healthy pink and his scorched hair returned to its healthy and vibrant blond.

 **That's what you get for going into "Nine-Tails Chakra Mode" in this body, brat!** a voice within Naruto snapped. **You're lucky you weren't killed, you idiot!**

"Love you too Kurama" Naruto said earning strange looks from Iruka and the dozens upon dozens of shinobi that had the clearing that he and Iruka were in surrounded.


	4. This Takes The Cake

Mizuki scowled as he watched the children in _his_ classroom frantically running about in a blind panic getting nothing done. It was clear that he'd never live that _incident_ that really wasn't an _incident_ , but nobody believed him since he'd constantly fought with the person killed in the _incident_ down. Even shinobi who had absolutely no idea what his name was - such as Hatake Kakashi - called him "team killer". About the only shinobi willing to work with him since he'd been accused of killing one of his own men on a mission was Iruka, which meant that he was stuck working at a dead-end job with little to no chance of promotion alongside Iruka who was strangely content to remain a Chunin _forever_. Not a fate that Mizuki who'd dreamed of rising in the ranks until his name was spoken on par with the likes of those of the Sannin had wanted for himself.

Mizuki was half tempted to gain control of his classroom and start the long-delayed lessons for the day, but he knew that engaging in that sort of power struggle with the Legendary Copy-Nin himself would not be worth the beatdown he'd receive in the end. Deciding that he may as well get things over with, and then take another, more serious look at the offer he'd received from Otogakure which had included an offer of being made a Jounin of said village later, Mizuki settled on a plan of action that would be the perfect revenge on the brats who participated in the ruination of his life and could potentially get the Jounin who'd ordered the party that the kids were freaking out over into trouble if he played his cards right. Course set, he whistled sharply, catching the attention of the students who had remained in the room.

"Alright kids!" Mizuki said to the children whose fear had abated greatly when they realized that he wasn't Kakashi returned to make them pay for not having a party ready for the Demon Brat. "Since I'm sure that, barring a few exceptions, none of you has the sort of money needed to pay for a birthday party for the _Uzumaki,_ I'm going to introduce you to a concept that you don't usually get taught until after you've made Genin."

This caught every student's attention, and the whispers of what was sure to be Mizuki's new nickname of "puddles" considering the cruelty of children who delighted in kicking you while you were down and then kicking you some more just to be sure abruptly silenced.

"This lesson is called 'Creative Sourcing' and is an age old tactic for gathering supplies needed for a mission when you find yourself running short in the field." Mizuki said, before outlining a lesson that was supposed to be taught well away from the village, since "Creative Sourcing" within Konoha's walls was generally considered illegal and usually ran under the moniker of "theft" when it was done in-village.

Mizuki was reasonably certain that he'd be able to get away with teaching this lesson because it wasn't like the current village police force were all that competent, and most villagers had a soft spot for pint-sized ninjas in training whose names weren't Uzumaki Naruto. Those who had a soft spot for mini-ninjas included the idiots who ran the village's much reduced KMPF who'd likely let the brats off with a warning so as not to destroy their future careers over such a piddling matter as a bit of shoplifting. He never would've tried this particular lesson in a million years had the Uchiha still been in charge. The Uchiha may have been utter bastards, and responsible for the Kyuubi attack that had landed Mizuki with the Demon Brat as a student because Iruka had agreed to teach the boy, but they had been incredibly competent bastards whose sense of pride wouldn't have allowed them to let anybody get away from stealing in _their_ village. Not even a bunch of Academy brats who were doing it as part of a "lesson".

After going over the basics of "Creative Sourcing", Mizuki led the children into the village proper and remained at the edge of the shopping district, loosely "supervising" in order to give the exercise something of an air of legitimacy, so _he_ wouldn't be the one getting in trouble for the fact that his students were running loose during what should've been class time and stealing things. Everyone in the village seemed to be more on edge than usual today, quite possibly because the Demon Brat had finally revealed his true nature this morning and quit hiding behind that mask of cheerful innocence he presented to the world.

As Mizuki watched. One of his moronic students made a move that was too obvious and was grabbed by the retired shinobi shopkeeper who ran the stand that the brat had tried stealing from. The kid tried explaining that he was doing it for a lesson, and frantically pointed towards where Mizuki was standing and watching. Rather than coming up to Mizuki and giving him a piece of his mind about what he was teaching the future shinobi of Konoha like Mizuki half expected he would, the shopkeeper started dragging the kid away, saying "Here's the other half of the lesson, called 'What happens when you don't get away with it'."

Mizuki contemplated going after his clumsy student who was clearly a future washout considering he couldn't get away with stealing a single bottle of soda from a one-legged shopkeeper and hadn't thought to kick the man's remaining leg out from under him while the man hopped down the street with him in tow, but decided that he couldn't be arsed to do so. Iruka would probably have some choice words for him and his decision to abandon his student to whatever fate awaited him later, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Hey, the kid was learning, and wasn't that kinda the point of being a teacher in the first place?

* * *

"Oh, hey Ino's dad!" said a short-haired blond man with three whisker marks on each cheek and bright blue eyes who was wearing a white cloak with flames on it near the bottom hem over a black and orange shirt and orange trousers and black sandals the instant Inoichi turned up in the sewer-like place that served as Uzumaki Naruto's mindscaped.

"Naruto?" Inoichi asked, wondering at the mental image the boy held of himself which didn't look very much like he did on the outside. Which was strange considering that most people's mental projections of themselves resembled what they looked like in the mirror, which tended to be rather interesting when dealing with a colorblind individual.

Before the man who stood before him looking like a combination of the Yondaime and someone whose name he couldn't quite place at the moment with a touch of Senju Hashirama thrown in could reply, a giant fox that looked like it was half the size of the village walked up out of the depths of the Uzumaki boy's mind and said **"You want me to eat this one like I did the others?"**. Had Inoichi had a body at that moment, he would've pissed and shit himself in that moment.

"You...What?!" The man who might've been Naruto said, looking first confused then angry and disappointed like a parent who had caught their child seriously misbehaving.

"Kurama! Turn them loose right now!" The man yelled an instant later, looking as if he hadn't once considered the possibility that the "others", most likely several other Yamanaka who had gotten the same idea he had, might be dead.

 **"Fine. Fine."** The Kyuubi said, trying to sound as if he hadn't cared either way whether the Yamanaka he'd eaten had lived or died, and that he hadn't cared the least bit about the chastisement he'd received from the possible Uzumaki Naruto. There was a hint of something of the expression a dog had when he was caught misbehaving about the Kyuubi's eyes though.

A second later, the Kyuubi popped a squat and a bunch of screaming Yamanaka, including one Inoichi hadn't seen in years since the young boy who was three years older than his daughter had been recruited by Danzo, came out of the opposite end of the Kyuubi from whence they'd entered.

"Kurama!" The blond man who was now facing the Kyuubi, allowing Inoichi to see that the Kanji for Nanadaime Hokage had been stitched onto the back of his cloak the way that the Yondaime'd had Yondaime Hokage stitched onto his growled at the Nine-Tailed Fox, not in the least bit intimidated by the creature.

 **"What?"** the Kyuubi asked a little too innocently.

"Did you just take a shit in my mind?!" The man yelled at the fox, sounding angry, slightly incredulous, and utterly disgusted at the same time.

 **"Wouldn't be the first time."** the Kyuubi said a little too breezily, as if he was trying to slip something past the man that he knew would upset him. **"Thanks to that bastard Obito making me eat a building, I was literally shitting bricks for over a month."**

The man that Inoichi was starting to suspect was an amalgam of Naruto and everyone else who'd been involved in sealing the Kyuubi away at some point, including Senju Hashirama himself who'd helped make the Kyuubi disappear at the Valley of the End, turned and stormed over to where a pair of massive gates stood wide open, barring nothing from entering or exiting the massive chamber beyond. After stepping into the massive chamber that was undoubtedly meant to keep the Kyuubi contained, the man made his way across into the darkness beyond the shadowy entryway.

"Holy...!" the man yelled before exclaiming. "Hey! There's a person in here!...How the hell is he even still alive?!"

 **"You don't want to know."** the Kyuubi rumbled.

Based on the way the Kyuubi had said it, Inoichi had the strongest feeling that he didn't. He really didn't.

* * *

The shinobi who had gathered around the demon possessed boy who had attacked one of his Academy Instructors hadn't known what to expect when they'd heard the first cries about the Kyuubi being loose which had sent them running and then cautiously following a one-sided running battle between the "Demon Brat" and one Umino Iruka. What had actually happened rather than what the shinobi had feared would happen turned out to be rather anticlimactic in the end.

After Umino Iruka had been beaten up a bit before being treed in the woods surrounding the village, the Kyuubi Chakra that had surrounded the Uzumaki boy had dissipated, and the boy who looked like he'd been burned from head to toe had collapsed, falling to the forest floor where his unnatural healing had set in, making burns that would've scarred anyone else for life vanish as if they'd never been.

With the screaming of a number of Yamanaka who'd bravely gone in to see if the Kyuubi had taken over and the appearance of a somewhat emaciated naked man who looked suspiciously like a Uchiha who had hobbled off into the woods screaming "Freedom!", the show was over.

As the crowd who'd been led to expect a Kyuubi attack and a massive battle to go with it began to grow restless, the Sandaime appeared, picked up an unresisting Uzumaki Naruto who was grumbling about someone named Kurama leaving massive piles of shit everywhere, and left, signaling that even the end-credits aftershow had ended.

Feeling somewhat embarrassed at what was obviously a false alarm considering the village wasn't half destroyed and there wasn't blood and bodies everywhere, the crowd, barring those who were helping Umino Iruka out of the tree and carrying off the traumatized Yamanaka who'd soiled themselves at some point, turned and went back to what they'd been doing before the cry had gone up.

* * *

Uchiha Sasuke ghosted through the private back area of the restaurant, headed to where a party was oddly enough being set up despite the fact that this wasn't a day for parties. At least three of his fellow classmates had been caught "appropriating" supplies, and the boy who stood at the top of his class was determined not to be. After all, if he could be caught by some measly civilians, there was no way he'd be able to equal and then best That Man who'd never be caught by a shopkeeper.

It was as the catering staff disappeared that he spotted it. The absolute perfect cake. Sure, it said "Happy Retirement", but he wasn't one to quibble over such minor points when the frosting was the same color of orange as the outfit that useless classmate who seemed to think he was his rival for some strange reason wore. Next to the cake was one of those cake and pie servers and more than enough forks for the entire class.

Taking out a storage scroll which he'd purchased at the start of the practical part of the lesson so he wouldn't be overladen with party supplies when a quick getaway was needed, Sasuke used what he'd learned in the brief lesson on sealing the class had the month before and through his own research to quickly stash the supplies he needed for the party the crazy man who had scared him worse than anyone in recent memory had done and brought up flashbacks of That Man had demanded.

A minute later, he was out the window and gone.

"How's that for irony." a man who looked to be entering late middle-age said as he watched the Uchiha boy casually walk up the street so as to not draw too much attention to himself. "I finally decide to go straight and get out of the burglary business for good, and on the day of my retirement, the son of the man who arrested me and got me put away for five years drops by and steals the cake and half the silverware."


End file.
